London - Art Market Monitor

Marion Maneker0March 22, 2013

Bonhams SA Art Gets £4.5m with Chinese Girl Making Nearly £1m

Bonham’s wants you to know more about Vladimir Tretchikoff who’s ‘Chinese Girl’ was sold this week at Bonhams South African art sale in London. The painting (est £300-500k) made £982,050 (R13.8m). The entire sale of some 150 works made £4.5m.

The buyer of ‘Chinese Girl’ is Laurence Graff, British businessman and jeweler and Chairman of Graff Diamonds International, who owns the Delaire Graff Estate near Stellenbosch, where this picture will go on public display with the rest of his art collection. www.delaire.co.za

Said to be the most widely reproduced and recognisable picture in the world, from the 1950s prints of this famous work sold widely in South Africa, Britain, Europe and America.

Significantly Tretchikoff out-performed the two longtime market leaders in South African art at auction – Irma Stern and Jacob Hendrik Pierneef. ‘Landscape Stellenbosch’ by Pierneef made £713,250 and ‘Congolese Beauty’ by Irma Stern was sold for £541,250.

Tretchikoff’s value has risen exponentially in the art market, due to both the re- evaluation of his legacy in exhibitions such as Tretchikoff: The People’s Painter, at IZIKO South African National Gallery (2011), and his appearance on the world stage at auction at Bonhams. A new world record was recently achieved at Bonhams with the semi-nude portrait painting, ‘Portrait of Lenka (Red Jacket)’, featuring Tretchikoff’s lover and muse, which sold for £337,250 (R4.7million). Just over 100 Tretchikoff works have appeared at auction, a twenty-year trajectory which charts a remarkable resurgence in the artist’s popularity.

Giles Peppiatt, Director of South African Art at Bonhams, comments: “This was an exceptional price for a work which really does merit the word ‘iconic’. And it’s very happy news to hear that it is going home.”

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0March 20, 2013

Sotheby’s Prints & Multiples w Picasso Ceramics = $10m

The big story in London’s print and multiple sales is the continuing strength in the Picasso ceramics market. Several sales over the last two years have generated price action which stimulates interest and buying. The Picasso ceramics were 100% sold and the entire multiple sale was more than 98% sold. Of the ceramics, 94% achieved prices above the high estimate. The total was $2.19m.

They were just part of a wider private collection of ceramics and prints auctioned this afternoon, which together achieved £2,075,125 ($3,132,194), double the pre-sale estimate (£972,100-£1,389,600 / $1.47-2.1 million). The star lot of the sale was Picasso’s Vase gros oiseau vert which sold for £104,500 ($157,732), nearly three times above its high estimate. The sale was 98.7% sold by lot and 90.3% sold by value.

Old Master, Modern & Contemporary Prints brought a total of £4,613,000 ($6,962,862), far exceeding the pre-sale low estimate (£3.2-4.65 million / $4.87-7 million). The top lot was Edvard Munch’s Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones, a rare woodcut from 1899, which sold for £986,500 ($1,489,023), a record for the subject by the artist, and almost four times above the low estimate (£250/300,000). The second highest price achieved was for a complete set of 10 screenprints by Andy Warhol of the Endangered Species series: the sum of £386,500 ($583,383) established a record for a complete set of this subject by the artist at auction. Rembrandt led the Old Masters section with Christ Presented to the People and The Three Crosses, each selling for £218,500 ($329,804). 55.2% of works sold achieving prices above the high estimate. The sale was 75.3% sold by lot and 88.6% sold by value.

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 05, 2012

Sotheby’s London Old Master Eve = £32.3m

Orazio Borgianni, Christ Amongst the Doctors (£400-600k) £3.4m
Hans Baldung, Virgin as Queen of Head (£1-1.5m) £2.1m
Circle of William Scrots, Portrait of Edward VI (£500-700k) £1.77m
French School, Profile Portrait of Louis XI (£400-600k) £735,650
Charles-Joseph Natoire, Triumph of Bacchus (£300-500k) £657,250

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 04, 2012

Sea Battle Makes £5.3m

Sotheby’s is excited about the sale of a sea battle:

A dramatic composition by Willem Van de Velde – an early war artist who 350 years ago went to great lengths to capture the heat of the action - sold for £5,305,250 / €6,605,026 / $8,319,163 at Sotheby’s, leaving far behind its pre-sale estimate of £1.5-2.5m.

In this evocative rendering of the Four Day Naval Battle against the English in 1666, the artist depicts his own father sketching in a tiny galliot beneath the stern of the English ship “The Royal Prince” as it surrenders. Van de Velde and his father were 17^th -century war artists, who put themselves at the heart of the action. The subject – the defeat of the English – marked the high point of Dutch naval history and was considered so important that the precursor of the Rijksmuseum attempted to acquire the work for the nation in 1800 but was outbid. The work was bought tonight by a private Dutch collector and will return to Holland.

Auction Results

Marion Maneker0July 04, 2012

Sotheby’s Old Master Drawings = £6.8m

Turner, Lausanne from the West (£600-800k)£1.049m
Turner, Domleschg Valley (£300-500k0 £601,250
Turner, Sunset Over Water (£80-120k) £529,250
William Hoare of Bath, Portrait of Henry Hoare (£15-20k) £361,250
Richard Parkes Bonington, The Piazzetta, Venice (£50-70k) £175,250
Jacob van Ruisdael, Shepherd and His Flock (£40-60k) £157,250
Phillips Wouwerman, Horse Being Schooled (£20-30k) £151,250
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Bearded Oriental (£30-40k) £145,250

Auction Results

Marion Maneker1July 04, 2012

Unknown Canaletto Makes £1.9m in Sotheby’s Drawing Sale

The Old Master drawing market suddenly took off today with the £6.8m sale at Sotheby’s, including this Canaletto which made nearly £2m against a £500k estimate. Here’s Sotheby’s release:

A rare, newly-discovered drawing by Canaletto sold for a record £1,945,250
(US$ 3,050,347) at Sotheby’s London. Completely unrecorded, this exceptional work – a view of the Campo di San Giacomo di Rialto – had not been seen in public since 1876. Its appearance at auction today generated huge excitement, culminating in an intense bidding battle between six determined collectors. Together they drove the price to a sum more than five times the original estimate of £300,000-£500,00, and four times the previous record for a drawing by the artist ($715,000/ £493,103 achieved for view of Warwick Castle, from the John R. Gaines Collection, sold in New York in November 1986.)

The drawing came to Sotheby’s via an unsolicited phone call. Unsuspecting its true value, the consignors to today’s auction had kept this rare drawing preserved – unknown to scholars – for over a century in their private collection.